Would Obama Veto Palestinian State in 2015?

As the dust settles from last week’s failed Palestinian effort to press for unilateral statehood at the UN Security Council, it seems likely that the Palestinian leadership will try again. Already, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has announced its intention to join the International Criminal Court (ICC). Israel has retaliated by withholding Palestinian tax receipts, urging the U.S. Congress to cut off $400 million in aid to the PA, and threatening to prosecute Palestinian leaders for war crimes. None of that has mattered.

The Palestinian strategy is to use any means necessary–including both terror and international pressure–to force Israel to give up more concessions, or merely to bide time until the Iranian regime can carry out its threat to wipe the Jewish state off the map. The U.S. worked to defeat the Palestinian state resolution, and has criticized the Palestinian effort to join the ICC, but the Obama administration is playing both sides of the game, urging more Israeli concessions and floating the idea of sanctions against Israel.

Reflecting on last week’s diplomatic fight, Oded Eran and Robbie Sabel write at the Institute for National Security Studies that the U.S. did threaten behind-the-scenes to use its veto to stop the Palestinian state resolution from going through–but add that it did so solely to fulfill its obligations under the 1979 treaty the Carter administration brokered between Egypt and Israel. They warn: “However, the US vote should not mislead anyone as to the mood in Washington and the voices in the administration.”

The implication is that the Obama administration might indeed allow a UN Security Council resolution on a Palestinian state to pass, provided some wording could be found that would accommodate the terms of Resolutions 242 and 338, which encourage a negotiated peace. No doubt the administration’s lawyers are already hard at work on identifying loopholes–or perhaps even on an alternative draft of their own. With more anti-Israel members of the Security Council in 2015 than 2014, the possibility is real.